Neville's Birthday
by Alania Black
Summary: Neville’s never known what he wanted for his birthday until this year this year he doesn’t want to be alone. Warning: slash, angst Gryffindor Boys Month No. 1


Title: Neville's Birthday

Ratings: 12/nc-13/T

Warnings: Introspection, angst, mentions of character deaths (no one important).

Summary: Neville's never known what he wanted for his birthday until this year; this year he doesn't want to be alone.

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or all related products, publications, etc. I do not own the computer I am currently using. You cannot sue me over any of them. So there.

Authors Notes: I was planning on doing a sequels month of the other months I've done, and I posted the first one, but my laptop broke and will take up to a month to fix. I'm using my sister's computer, which means I have a lot less time to write than I did, and I will be writing most of this on paper and typing it up (which you can't do with sequels since you need the original first) and writing an original fic is a lot quicker than a sequel. Therefore this is the third Alania Fic Month, this time based on the Gryffindor Boys. Or, more specifically, the other three boys, not Harry and Ron. For information about what a Month is, details are in my profile.

Neville knows what he wants for his birthday. He's never known, before. Always just shrugged if people asked and accepted what he was given. This year, though, it's different, this year Neville knows. Neville knows that what he wants for his birthday is to not celebrate it alone.

He's never celebrated it alone before, he's always had his Gran, and he visits his parents. Last year his Gran threw him a party because he was seventeen, and his Great Uncle Algie came, and his aunts and cousins and even the boy next door, a few years older than Neville, visited with his parents. He gave Neville his first proper kiss as his present.

This year there's no party, no parents, no Gran. Gran's been dead for several months, from an illness long overdue to kill her. Great Uncle Algie sent a card, but the rest of the family isn't interested in the reclusive Longbottom heir, who they still see as the clumsy near-squib he was as a child. His parents are thankfully gone too, lost in the attack on St Mungos, before the end. He knows it's wicked, to be glad they're gone, but he can't help the relief at never having to go there again, to see them again. They should have been dead for fifteen years, most people pretended that they had been, and even though Neville doesn't want to be alone this year, he'd rather be alone than have to spend any time today visiting them, even their graves.

What Neville truly wants, he's willing to admit to himself, isn't not being alone, but being _with_ someone. Being with Harry. Harry who disappeared a year ago today, on their birthday, the dead body of Lord Voldemort appearing in the middle of Diagon Alley along with several others. Bellatrix (and Neville felt bitterly angry for a while, wishing he'd been the one to do it), Pettigrew; Malfoy, in payment for Draco, who woke up after the war with barely any of his memories and spent weeks struggling to regain enough to live in the world again. All of them, he knew, were messages, all of them were important. Punishment, a vindictive revenge that few would ever understand on the people who had hurt Harry the most. A message, to those to whom it mattered, that he had survived, and was out there somewhere.

That was also an explanation for the disappearance, mostly hidden, of Hermione and Ronald Weasley, of Draco barely three weeks after he was released from Mungos. Ginny then Luna then Seamus and Dean together two days after their wedding. He wonders if they've formed their own little community, wonders how they knew where to go. Wonders if they're happy. And today, Harry's birthday and his, Neville sits alone in his little flat, looking at precious mementos of the short time he was happy. Now he's… Not unhappy, but not happy, either. Disconnected, discontented. Alone. He wonders, today, if they think of him. If they think he should be there, and wonders if so, why they haven't made contact. Wonders, in his deeper, darker places, if he was as out of place with them as he was with his family. He doesn't wonder why that thought hurts more.

At ten that night,. Neville finally gave up the ghost, blew out his one lonely candle on his little fairy cake, and went to bed. He missed the soft shadows on his floor as he passed, missed the sparkle of light off glass that shouldn't be there. Missed a gentle breath of air concealing a spell as he flowed into a deeper and easier sleep than he'd ever had before.

The disappearance of Neville Longbottom on the 31st July went as unnoticed as the disappearances of the Weasleys two weeks after the final battle, of Remus Lupin three days later, of Ginny Weasley within a month and Draco Malfoy within three. Of Luna Lovegood six months after the battle and Seamus and Dean Finnegan while still on honeymoon eleven months later. The only ones who noticed, who cared, knew where he was. Knew he was safe, and cared for and someplace where he belonged. Knew, as they watched him marry Harry Potter in a private ceremony on their nineteenth birthday, that he was loved.


End file.
